Too much work for courts, says judge

Work pressures on judges and court staff was referred to by Judge Elizabeth MacGrath at a recent sitting of Nenagh District Court.

Noting the long list of cases spanning over 17 A4 pages, Judge MacGrath said there was no possible way that all the people appearing before her could have their cases properly dealt with in one day.

She said she had already raised the issue of District Court workloads with the CEO of the Courts Service and the backlog of cases due to come before the courts when society fully re-opens once restrictions introduced due to the Covid pandemic were lifted.

The judge said there needed to be a proper case list system introduced in the district courts to ensure that cases were properly scheduled.

There was an insufficient number of judges and staff to deal with the number of cases coming before the courts.

Judge MacGrath said her priority was to do the job she was appointed to do, which was to administer justice.

Any person that appeared before her would be dealt with in a fair and proper manner. That is the way she intended to proceed in her court going forward and there would be no optics.

Given the workload before her, she said she was forced to adjourn several cases that were due to be dealt with on Friday. She noted that there were cases dating back to three years that had still not been finalised and she intended to give these priority. The judge said there had been a limit on the work the court could do over the past year due to the pandemic and the situation people found themselves in due to the crisis.